Our summer, Trump's summer, and an interview with Archbishop Wester
Heidi, Daniel, and David catch up on the many projects and changes they've been working on over the summer break. They also recap the many moves of the Trump administration and what they might mean for America and the Church. Heidi interviews Archbishop Wester of Santa Fe about nuclear disarmament.
INTRO
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DAULT: Hello and welcome to the Francis Effect Podcast. We are back for, I don't even know what season it is at this point, but it's a lot of seasons and we are back for our fall season 2025. My name is David Dalt. I host a radio show called Things Not Seen About Culture and Faith, and I'm an assistant professor of Christian Spirituality at the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago.
I'm here with my dear friends Heidi Schlump and Dan Harran. Heidi is an award-winning journalist and part-time faculty at Loyola University Chicago. Dan is professor of philosophy, religious studies and theology at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He is also affiliated professor of Spirituality at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas.
Every couple of weeks we get together to discuss news and events through a lens of our shared Catholic faith. And in our first segment today, we're gonna be going in depth. About what we did over the summer, but for now, Dan and Heidi, welcome to you both. Heidi. How are you doing?
SCHLUMPF: I am doing great. It's so good to be back with you guys and I think we might be on season 17. Don't quote me on that, but I was doing some organizing over the summer. It's so good to be back and it was so wonderful to see both of you for our listener. As we had an in-person lunch compliments of David at the university club in Hyde Park, and it was just so wonderful to see both of you in person after so long of being just doing this via Zoom, but also it is just.
You know, not only catching up, but some strategic planning about what we're gonna do with the podcast going forward and talking about guests and kinds of things we're gonna do. I'm really excited for the season and just really great to be back for our many listeners who I know miss us over the summer.
'cause I hear from them. So what about you, Dan? Great to see you again.
HORAN: Always good to see you both and yeah, likewise. It was wonderful to connect in person just a few weeks ago in Chicago. So it's good to be back virtually as we kick off. Yeah, I, by my count as well, season 17 yeah, it's been, right now we're at the start of a new academic year here at St.
Mary's and in Notre Dame and Holy Cross, today is the first day of classes. So, we kind of went from zero to a hundred on campus. And those of you who are students or, you know, work at. At a college or university know that, you know, August is you can hear the crickets until the first day of school and then it's just mass chaos in the best way.
So, it's good to be back. I actually was down at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio last week for a conference on the life and legacy of. Henry Nowan the great spiritual writer and author. And it was wonderful to see some of my students there and to talk with colleagues and friends a number of whom are fans and of the Francis Effect and love listening to us.
So they asked, when are we starting up again? And they asked how the two of you are so greetings to you from the Lone star state. And I told them, well. Get ready next week. We're back. So here we are. David, how are you doing at the start of a new semester?
DAULT: first of all, I wanna say I love Henry now and I've always wanted to host an event called Now and then Now and now, but I don't. Think I'll ever get a chance to do that or
HORAN: never say never.
DAULT: But I'm doing well. Just like you Dan. We are in the midst of the first week of classes and so, this week I'll be teaching two sections of foundations of Christian Spirituality, and I'm looking forward to that.
My kids have been back in school now for a couple of weeks and we had our first meltdown over the weekend, so we're sort of navigating the shift back into that schedule. But I think it's gonna be a good year for everybody. And speaking of good years, we are kicking off this fall season as I have been told by my colleague season 17.
And we are looking forward to bringing you a lot of really good conversations and analysis with an eye for our shared Catholic faith. Today on the program, we're gonna take our first segment and we're gonna be looking. At kind of what we did over the summer and catching up on that and talking about various projects that are in the works.
And then in our second segment, we're going to look at what President Donald Trump did over the summer and look at some of the effects that is having on the American economy. The American social landscape the way that the church is being perceived in the media, all of that is gonna be in the mix.
And then in our third segment, and I'm really excited about this, Heidi interviews Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico. So all of that is coming up here on the Francis Effect. Please stay with us.
SEGMENT 1 - Summer Catching Up
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DAULT: Welcome back to The Francis Effect. I'm David Dolt and I'm here with Dan Horan and Heidi Schlump. Every couple of weeks we get together to discuss a variety of topics from a perspective informed by our Catholic faith. Summer came and went, and now fall is once again upon us to kick things off,
we wanted to take some time to look back on the last few months we were on break from recording and catch up on all that happened while we were in between podcast seasons. There was no shortage of national and international headlines this summer that reflect a shared experience of highs and lows on a whole range of topics on an individual basis.
Each of us had an eventful few months, which included a wonderful in-person reunion of the Francis Effect in July the first in a while. So as we officially head into the fall months and kick off this new podcast season, let's hear about what each of us has been up to since we last spoke on Air. Dan, let's start with you.
How was your summer and what have you been up to?
HORAN: Thanks, David. I summer was good. It, like every year it goes by quickly and every year it seems to go by quicker than the year before. And so, yeah, here we are. I was just reminiscing before we got on on the mic as it were to record this episode. When was the last time we got together for the podcast proper?
And that was our special post-season interim, pope Leo episode back at the end of May. So in fact, a lot has happened in the subsequent three months including in June conference season. So it's tra I was traveling all around the US for theology conferences, which tend to take place again at the end of the academic year, in the beginning of the summer.
So that brought me to Portland, Oregon for the Catholic Theological Society of America Conference. To Denver, Colorado for the International Thomas Merton Society Conference, and across the street at the University of Notre Dame for the conference on the history of women religious, which the center I directed at the time co-sponsored.
So, it was just one conference after another in a real sort of you know, nonstop. Conferencing experience. I mentioned the center. I used to direct one kind of professional developmental change is that I decided to step down from my administrative role as the director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality here at St.
Mary's. After four years of leadership was really excited to usher in kind of, this milestone of the 40th anniversary year, which we celebrated. In the 24 25 academic year. And for a number of reasons, it was just the right time for me to return back to the faculty full time which has been really nice.
There are a number of things that I loved about it being an administrator including putting on events and conferences, having colleagues and others come to campus to give lectures putting on workshops and seminars for research and to help promote the research of others, but. One of the things I've found this summer is I've transitioned back into just the one hat instead of two hats, which is my faculty hat.
Is that I've really not had as much time to do research and to do the writing and the other things that are really important as well. So, so trading, you know, pros and cons and in each of the different sort of roles that we have. Continue to be a big supporter of the work of the center.
And my colleague Dr. Julia Federer is serving as acting director for the next couple of years. So, really excited about, you know, the sorts of programming that she's gonna be able to kinda spearhead. So that has involved as well some logistics. I've had my faculty office in the academic.
Building where the philosophy and religious studies and theology departments are. But I have been camping out in another building where the Center for the Study of Spirituality is. So what that has meant is that over the summer, packing up dozens and dozens of boxes of books that then get moved to another building and then I unpack them and put them back on shelf.
So, anyone who is moved. Near or far, it always is a real pain. So I'm glad to have that behind me. But I'm curious to hear, you know, there were other things too but what have you two been up to? What's been exciting? What has been challenging? Have you had any vacations? I.
SCHLUMPF: Well, I also have some professional announcement to make. You may have noticed at the top when I was introduced, I was no longer. Are introduced as working at the National Catholic Reporter. So, some people might have missed, but at in the late spring, early summer, I was laid off from NCR, and so now I am working as a freelance journalist who is looking for a full-time gig.
Eventually, I had hoped to kind of take the summer off and reflect and recover from. The you know, difficulty that it is to leave a job when it's not your decision. And to be honest, I, this was announced at least for me on social media. I was laid off for financial reasons. I was told some other folks have left NCR, my colleague Chris White also.
Left and he's now at Georgetown. So there are a lot of changes happening at the paper. But I did not get to do as much just sitting around the pool as I had hoped this summer. We didn't do a lot of family vacations this year because one of my kids was, had a job and the other one was taking a college level course this summer.
So, we had to stay around for those reasons. But I very quickly learned that there are, that I'm in high demand as a freelance writer, so I've had a lot of assignments and I said yes to a lot of things. But it's been really fun working for. Different editors and different publications. I had been doing some freelancing for US Catholic Magazine already, and I'm still writing for them, doing some scripture reflections for them.
I'm doing some writing for religion news service and some analysis pieces for Common Wheel. And of course I have class starting short this week as well. I'll be teaching the same class I taught last fall on, that's basically about Catholic social teaching at Loyola. And then. Some consulting I've done for different Catholic organizations, so a very full plate, which has been fun.
But also doing some conversations with folks about potential full-time jobs in the future too. So I've landed on my feet and I'm feeling really good where I am. So, just thought I'd alert our listeners to that news. What about you, David?
DAULT: Well, before we get into me, I just I want to acknowledge that both of you have had some pretty major changes. Are there pastoral supports or spiritual supports that I or others can be offering to you? Anything specifically we can be praying for any. Thing we can be doing to let you know that you are loved and that you are cared for in the midst of these major transitions.
SCHLUMPF: Well, I'll never turn down prayers, so I'll take those, especially as I'm trying to discern what my next full-time employment's gonna be. So if listeners wanna pray for me, I always feel supported by you guys in everything I do though. So thanks to both David and Dan for the support through the entire transition.
HORAN: You.
DAULT: Well, let me just say that my summer really wasn't a summer because it started out with a kind of huge wallop and it ended up with kind of a huge wallop and in the middle there was a lot of work as well. So, as listeners may recall I spent two weeks in Italy. 10 days of that were spent with a wonderful group of students as.
Part of the regular Loyola summer abroad program that is shepherded by my dear friend and colleague, Mike Canis. And we spent 10 days in Rome, basically using the city as our classroom. Doing both sort of architectural learning, but also a great deal of theological and spiritual learning, both for the Catholic church and the Christian Church generally, but also for the history of the Ignatian traditions, including the Jesuit traditions.
I had a wonderful time. It was exhausting, it was very hot. I discovered a new favorite Italian food in Cacho at Pepe, and I just really had a blast. And then I had a few days afterwards to catch up with my dear friend Robert and his husband Luke. Uh, Who are spending two years doing a summer abroad program of their own for Dickinson College up in Bologna.
And so I had a chance to sort of take a tour through the middle of Italy, starting in Rome, but then going to Perusia and a CC. And Florence and and then ending up in Bologna for a couple of days. So, just an amazing time and I'm looking forward to going back. I hope at some point to be able to take my family to share with them what I have discovered.
I, I've never been to Southern Europe before and it was just a sheer delight. And also the Vatican was really neat. I will just say that. And getting a chance to be around all of that intense Catholic stuff was really amazing. At the end of the summer, and this was just a few days ago that I got back I spent another week and a half in Japan.
And this was for a peace pilgrimage that was headed up by several Cardinals and Archbishops, including our guest today in the third segment, Archbishop Wester but Cardinal Soup and Cardinal McElroy were there, as well as Archbishop Etienne of Seattle, Washington. And the reason why each of these, princes of the church were sort of leading the trip is because their various dioceses and archdioceses have some connection to the history or the production of nuclear weapons. And we were there in Japan going to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to commemorate and to bear witness to the 80th anniversary of the bombings that happened there.
The only use in wartime of atomic. Weapons, we hope ever. As was said, many times during our visit, there are no more hiroshimas. No more nagasaki's. I'm still processing a lot of what happened there and what I saw, but one of the things that really became very apparent to me when I was in my twenties and I was not Catholic, I was a member of the religious society of.
Friends, the Quakers. I was very intentional about getting involved in piece work at a volunteer and a professional level. The last couple of decades, I've stepped away from that for various reasons, and I'm thinking in the third act of my life, as I think about, you know, how I'm going to be moving towards retirement and what I'm gonna be spending my time as an academic doing.
I think that peace work, particularly nuclear disarmament work, is gonna become much more strongly a central. Part of what I write and think about moving forward in part because. I had an amazing experience, but also now as a result of being there with this delegation of more than 50 people, not simply Cardinals and archbishops, but also university administrators and faculty, and a wonderful group of American and Japanese students, I.
I now have a network of conversation partners that I can be sort of drawing on to help me get connected back into that kind of piece work. And then in the middle, between those two trips, I did have a chance to relax a bit for a week with my family, but also in and around that I was finishing my second book.
Listeners will know that. Last spring I, I I handed in the final edited draft of the Accessorized Bible for Yale University Press. In the interim, between these two international trips, I finished a book called The Covert Magisterium for Bloomsbury Press. I'm excited that both of these books are eventually gonna come into the world, and I'll have more to say about them as we get closer to publication.
But for right now, I'm simply glad to be starting a fall without a sort of Damocles hanging over my head. That things are on deadline and I have to get stuff done for editors. I'm gonna enjoy just teaching my classes and writing whatever the heck I wanna write for the next little while. So that's me.
HORAN: That sounds pretty good to me. Congratulations, David. That's
SCHLUMPF: Yes. Congratulations. And I wanted to say like talk I've been, was so, inspiring to talk to Archbishop Wester. He's been such a leader on this issue of nuclear. Disarmament, and I'm glad David, you're gonna pick up the mantle of doing that work as well. I know you taught a class on the topic last semester.
I don't remember if I asked you this, but did you get to see Pope Leo when you were in Rome?
DAULT: So I definitely had opportunities to see Pope Leo, but I'm not much for crowds. And so, in order to actually see him in person, I would've had to have waited in line. And stood in a crowd of several tens of thousands of people. I just given the amount of social stuff I was doing on the ground with the students and the amount of kind of spoons I was burning through every day, I made the executive decision that this visit, I was not gonna try and see him in person.
The thing that really did kind of touch me though was I had the opportunity because it's a jubilee year, and our entire group had this opportunity to walk through all four of the Jubilee doors at the various major churches around the city, and to walk through the doors that Pope Francis had physically opened as a part of his duties for the jubilee year was actually very moving for me, and I wept at several points, walking through these doors, realizing that.
You know, this was one of the last acts that Pope Francis did in sort of declaring this year of Jubilee. So I have some good connections to the papacy from the trip, but a physical look at Pope Leo was not one of them. Again, I hope to get the chance to go back and actually have enough spoons to brave the crowds.
HORAN: The Italian crowds are actually quite unruly if, particularly if you're not used to it. So, there's a great energy and val there. But at the same time, it's it even for folks who might be more comfortable navigating crowds and kind of chaotic areas. It's always a, it's a, it requires a learning curve.
David, I have to ask though first how is AC easy?
DAULT: So I loved Assisi and the way that Assisi unfolded was we got to Assisi, we parked, we were walking into the little town, and my friend Robert realized that he hadn't applied suntan lotion. And so he. He went back to the car, we opened up the trunk, he put on the suntan lotion. We closed the trunk, and we were walking back and he went to lock the car and realized that he had locked his keys in the trunk.
And so, so Robert, who had been to Assisi before very wisely said, listen. This is this, I, we were doing this for you anyway. Why don't you just go and walk around and explore and I'll deal with getting the keys outta the trunk. But that meant that basically I had an afternoon a couple of hours because it ended up being that they had to call the Italian equivalent of aaa.
Don't know what that was. To come and get the keys outta the trunk. But during that time, I just had the chance to sort of make a easy my own. And so if you you both have been there, so you know you sort of, you can walk up and up and up until you get to this pathway that sort of goes over the mountain between.
The sort of east and west points of the town, and you're looking out at the valley, you're looking out at everything and you just, if you start there and you sort of work your way down to the lowest point of the city, you have a beautiful walking tour. And so I had the chance to just spend an afternoon in beautiful sunlight.
Looking at all of these amazing winding alleyways and just exploring with no purpose in mind, and it was just delightful. And I hope to get a chance to go back and friends, I would love to go back with the both of you. I'll just say that too.
SCHLUMPF: Well, we were there once together too, so I was very lucky to get a tour that was put on by an actual Franciscan and I learned a lot about Francis, but you're right, just exploring the town and the food there is amazing.
DAULT: Well, Dan, and I've been talking about the books that I've been working on, but you mentioned that you're getting back into some research. I know you've got some things on deck that you are working on and that are coming out. Do you want to take a moment and talk a little bit about that?
HORAN: Sure. Yeah. So both of the major projects I'm working on right now are things I've been working on for a while, one for a very long time. The. First is a book on Christology or on Jesus Christ in particular the Super Laps tradition, which is this tradition, which is fully orthodox, although it's oftentimes shocking to Christians who hear about it for the first time that God would've become human even if we had not sinned. This idea that although Christ, because of our fallenness, because of our our sin, going all the way back to our earliest kind of parents, as it were requires a certain reconciliation, right? We need to be made right with God. We need to be.
Reunited with God and that is accomplished through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. But what if we had not sinned? This was a kind of a famous medieval counterfactual question. And there are a number of different approaches to this. Over the course of 2000 years, there are resources within the New Testament that attest to God's eternal kind of plan or will.
That creation was not an afterthought. A plan B an incarnation isn't just something that kind of happens out of chance or that's unpredictable, but that God has always desired to draw near to God's creation. So much more to say about that. I've been working on that for a while and have taught some courses and lectured about that here and there, and people have often asked me, is this book actually gonna see the light of day?
And I'm happy to say that it's on its way. So for my editor who may or may not be listening out there, I promise it's moving forward. The bigger project is one that has, I've been working on for more than a decade, and this is the editing of the correspondence between Thomas Merton and his agent editor and very close friend, Naomi Burton Stone.
That has, it's been a long process out of necessity. There were almost a thousand letters exchanged between them. Naomi is one of the. People, not only who was closest to Merton on a professional and on a personal level, but also the longest female relationship that Merton ever had. So his mother died when he was six years old.
You know, he enters religious life in the late thirties, early forties after his conversion to Catholicism in the late thirties. And you know this, so there's a lot there and it's really quite extraordinary. And so, it's been really wonderful to be working on this project.
One of the things that has slowed it down in recent years, maybe this is too much inside baseball. But I think it's or I might say inside Cricket, and I'll explain why in a second, which is that the Merton Legacy Trust, which Merton in his last years to help establish with the Abbey of Gethsemane oversees the rights and the permissions for all of Merton's literary estate.
So things that have not been published that are to be published, or editors who are granted kind of the authority to do the work that they're doing. I've been working with Merton Legacy Trust now for about 15 years on this project, and about 15 years ago. The Merton Legacy Trusts attorney reached out to the heirs of Naomi Burton Stone.
And they were very enthusiastic at first, but this was just kind of to get things rolling. Fast forward more than a decade, and it's getting close to time for the project to be published and to work with a publisher and establish a contract, and we needed to reestablish communication with Naomi's relatives who are over in the United Kingdom.
And the email and the contact and the information was not kind of up to date. The attorney who had made that contact 15 years ago had since died. And so like there were all these sort of kind of issues. Long story short, and it is a very long story the archivist and residential secretary of the Merton Legacy Trust, Dr.
Paul Pearson in Louisville, Kentucky once mentioned to me in passing that he seemed to recall. The executor of the Naomi Burton Stone Estates spouse is a kind of historian of cricket and had written a number of books about the history of cricket and that if all else were to fail, maybe there was some way through that person's publisher to reach his spouse and get in touch with this woman who was the last person to kind of sign off on this.
And so I tried every other avenue and then remembered that and reached out to a cricket magazine in the UK that happened to. Publish a number of this person's articles and within a couple hours of reaching out kind of to this editor out of the blue with this crazy story, I hear from this gentleman who gives me both his updated email and his spouse's email and we're off to the races and they have been wonderful and the family very supportive of this project.
So, yeah, I'm working with the University of Notre Dame Press and hope that this comes out and. And well, it'll come out sooner rather than later. But it's still, there's still a lot of work ahead, but that little experience was something in the last couple months, you know, earlier this year that has been really, you know, really exciting and it makes for a very interesting story.
At least I think it's interesting. Maybe our listeners have chewed out at this point. But David, thanks for asking. And yeah, in the meantime, I'm also working on a couple articles and book chapters that I have deadlines for, so keeping busy, that's for sure.
DAULT: That's amazing, and thank you for giving us an update. On that. So listeners, you're gonna hear a lot more about what we're working on in the episodes to come, but for now we're gonna bring this segment to a conclusion. When we come back after the brief interlude here, we're gonna be picking up on kinda looking in a broad.
Sweep at what Trump has been doing president Trump has been doing for the last several months since we've been on break. And so we're looking forward to getting back into that conversation in just a moment. But for now if you'll stay with us, you're listening to the Francis Effect.
SEGMENT 2 - Update on the Trump Administration
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HORAN: Welcome back to The Francis Effect. I'm Dan Horan and I'm here with Heidi Schlump and David Dolt. Every couple of weeks we get together to discuss a variety of topics from a perspective informed by our shared Catholic faith. At the beginning of the summer, the Trump White House issued a memorandum that amended the hiring practices for the federal government.
In addition to eliminating all consideration of diversity, equity, and inclusion from the hiring process, the memo also instructed hiring managers to include language in job applications that amounts to a loyalty oath to Donald Trump. Instead of to the Constitution. This is just one of the many concerning developments that have happened since our last episode While we were on summer break, the Trump administration has continued its aggressive and often illegal practices against persons perceived to be immigrants.
With the help of Congress, Trump has also continued to roll out tax breaks for the rich. While enacting draconian tariffs on imported goods, which are the equivalent of a hefty tax burden placed on the poor and middle class, especially as we record this, Trump has deployed military troops on the streets of Washington DC and is threatening to take similar military actions in cities like Chicago and other me major cities around the nation.
There is really too much for us to cover here in the time that we have, and we're not gonna be able to cover all of it, obviously. But David, help us. Where do we begin?
DAULT: Well, I think the place I want to begin is kind of where you began with that topper, and that is this idea that somehow we will have not simply people coming into federal work in the government who are taking an oath to uphold and support the Constitution, but the language in that memorandum is, you know, how will you.
Be supporting and enacting with specific reference to executive orders, the agenda of the president. And so there is this sense in which Donald Trump is building around himself a cordon of. Factotums Lackeys a support system that is extra judicial and is not beholden to the normal structures of civilian command and control.
But, you know, just this week president Trump has been referring to himself as the kind of chief law enforcement officer, which is not really language that has been utilized. Around the presidency prior to this. And so there's a lot of really disturbing sort of, language that is happening.
And at the same time that we're seeing this kind of erasure of DEI as part of federal hiring, we're also seeing a very visible sort of marquee events happening around the nation. As we're recording this over the weekend. The. Pulse nightclub, Memorial Walkway, which was basically a crosswalk that had been painted in the rainbow colors reminiscent of the gay rights flag.
One of the pride flags that was in the middle of the night, it was painted over so that where there was a rainbow, there was now simply black in the crosswalk, and again. There is this notion of the erasure of any kind of support for minority identities, for any kind of minority stories.
So all of that is sort of happening at the same time that we have this troubling language of how will you support and how will you enact specifically with reference to these executive orders, the agenda of President Trump. So that's one place that I'd like to start is simply, you know, we're seeing an ideological shift at the level of the federal government.
All of these positions that had been. Let's call them sort of scare quoted, nonpolitical in the past are now being moved to a kind of overtly political footing, and that's one major area of concern. Everything else that you mentioned in, in the Topper, of course is also, you know, on the front burner for me.
But I think that's where I'd like to start. I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts about that.
SCHLUMPF: What you hear people say is like, if you're worried about authoritarianism coming, it's already here. And I think it's very concerning. I mean, the toppers kinda succinctly summarized a lot of things that have happened in the two months, but there's just even more, you know, the changes in public health, the getting rid of vaccine research, the zillions of federal employees who are being let go. The changing things in the Smithsonian Institute, museum so that we downplay how bad slavery was. I mean, all of these things are very frightening and I know for a lot of people. It's overwhelming. And I know even for me and I'm in the news business, it can be overwhelming to be paying attention every single day to everything that's happening.
And then on top of it, the, we have, you know, things going on globally in terms of war in Ukraine and Trump not exactly helping there either, as well as you know, mass starvation going on in Gaza. So it's very easy to just wanna check out and, you know. Stream Netflix or something and not pay attention to the news.
But I have been encouraged that it does seem like some Catholics and some Catholic leaders are stepping up. Not as much on the authoritarian issues, but definitely on the, you know. The kidnapping really. What else can we say? And taking to my pa it wasn't my pastor, a priest who was preaching yesterday, used the term concentration camps to talk about where immigrants are being taken.
And I think that's a fair terminology to use. That is especially concerning to me and I'm glad to see at least some church leaders speaking out about that. But but yeah, it's all under disguise of. Trump and authoritarianism and moves to make sure that we don't have to worry about electing somebody else in the future because we're gonna change maps and then also the way we vote so that we don't ever have to worry about Trump or his cronies being in out of power.
So these are things that are very concerning. And I'm trying very hard not to get overwhelmed about so that we can still try to fight and do something about. What about you, Dan?
HORAN: Yeah, I'm in, I'm on a similar page as the two of you. And I struggle as well. I mean, Heidi, you mentioned at the top of your comments just now about. We're kind of at in this like context of autocracy or authoritarianism and I think there's something that's right about that. I can't quite put my finger on it.
I mean, I was very convinced by the short book, by Timothy Snyder on tyranny that like a lot of the markers that are classically identified with the rise of autocracy and tyrannical sort of leadership and thinking on the verge of Dick. Dictatorship is playing out before us. I mean, I think the thing that gives me pause and where I struggle is that it just sounds.
It sounds alarmist to a lot of people, and even as the words leave my mouth I think to myself, well, is that the case? You know, the fears, of course the, you know, the boy who cried wolf, right? Or the chicken little situation where, you know, if, you know, if we. Say this too often or too much, you know, sort of like the comparison to Nazis is oftentimes lifted or like, you know, you see lifted up as an example.
Anytime you mention Hitler in an argument, you lose the argument. There's that cliche. And yet in 2017 we saw people who were identifying as white nationalists and Charlottesville and elsewhere. Exhibiting behaviors and rallying and, you know, expressing antisemitic and racist. Slurs and perspectives and ideology that, what else would you call it?
So I feel really strange to be honest with you because I think that there is a way in which the popular discourse has watered down some of these otherwise very alarming sort of descriptors and words and turns of phrase. I wonder though, if this isn't actually in some ways exactly the point, right?
It's a slow drip. It's a slow march to autocracy. It's not something that happens overnight. Going back to the early 20th century in the rise of dictatorships in Europe, particularly after the First World War, you know, famously in Germany. People are quick to point out that Adolf Hitler was legitimately elected the Chancellor of Germany.
And and the same thing is true with Donald Trump. He was legitimately elected the president of the United States in 2024. And that is very disturbing when people who have these sorts of agendas and interests are, you know, operating under the kind of perception of a mandate, even if it is extra legal.
DAULT: One thing that I wanted to ask you both about is in the wake, especially of the attacks on immigrants, we have been seeing at the, at. The level of, even in, let's call them kind of red state, di and really kind of following the lead of Pope Leo in some ways a real sense in which rank and file Catholics and some Catholic leadership are stepping up and trying to be.
Physical shields and and sort of stand in solidarity with the the immigrants that are under attack. And I wonder, have you considered this to be a kind of heartening trend? I've been emboldened by it, but I'm not sure how much weight bearing it has in the grand scheme of things. And I'm interested in your takes on that.
SCHLUMPF: I mean, yeah, certainly the US bishops were already speaking out against the idea of mass deportations even before Trump won. And now that we have these very scary masked people, you know, going into cities and areas and abducting people, many of whom are here legally, and even some people who are not even immigrants.
You know, it's frightening, I think, to everyday people. And of course it's good to see some religious leaders, you know, showing up at immigration court, feeling like they're having a presence there. If priests come in or bishops come in, their collars, you know, Weisenberger in Detroit was out marching.
They had a march that went to the ICE offices. I'm seeing lay people organize, and one of the pieces I wrote for religion news service over the summer was about a group of women who met online and are like, you know, they're not. Flaming liberals, most of them either they're pretty traditionalist, especially on like the issue of abortion.
But they were horrified but was ha what was happening to children and mothers and others. And they formed a group that tries to draw on Catholic social teaching and they're reaching out to bishops to say, we need you to do more. I know people are encouraged because. Immigration does seem like the one issue that most bishops agree on, so you don't really have too many bishops saying, you know, yeah, this is a great thing, mass deportations, but many are quiet quieter than they should be, and it's still not given the attention and the resources, that the issue of like abortion was and continues to be given.
So, but I think it's gonna be everyday Catholics, maybe more than our religious leaders who are going to be stepping up on this issue.
HORAN: Well, and I think that is often the case, isn't it? Right. So I wrote a column in July where, you know, I talked about how the bishops have remained. Rather silent in the face of all the Trump administration's anti-environmental policies, the rolling back of a number of, again, bipartisan efforts to have, for instance, clean air and clean water.
I mean, this is not a partisan issue. This is not a political issue. We've seen as well the kind of defanging of the EPA and then some of the other kind of legislative and judicial decisions that have that have really created. Again, in a kind of ad hoc way but something of a safety net when it comes to care for creation and for you know, the whole of the human family, especially those who are most vulnerable.
So these are kind of intersecting issues of justice, of course, but then again, I find myself, you know, really struggling with. What is the language? I mean, how many more times can Dan Haran write a column about, you know, creation or environmental justice? I don't, I'm not under the, any kind of delusion that's gonna make, you know, any kind of major change.
Except that I think each of us, where we find ourselves needs to keep speaking out, needs, need to use the platforms that we have. I liked the example you used, Heidi of. You know, a group of people getting together on Zoom or through social media. I think a number of the marches we've seen back in June about the No Kings Day march that Saturday.
And subsequently, I think that's important because it's a reminder that in the spirit of Catholic social teaching of solidarity that we're in this together. And that. While a cynical read might be, well, these are superficial sort of, you know, markers of solidarity. You know, I think when people actually get together, when people kind of use their voice that's a start.
One thing that I've been really struck by, I've been thinking a lot about and might appear in an article in the next week or two is something that actually David Brooks drew our attention to over the weekend in his column about nihilism. And I thought that was kind of interesting. I mean, more and more.
Thinking, you know, that can be kind of an intimidating term. It's got a lot of philosophical history, but at the end of the day I think it's summarized best by, you know this line from The Dark Knight, from the Christopher Nolan Batman series where Alfred makes this comment about the Joker and that actually there is no sort of end in sight. There is no sort of alternative interest or sort of goal that he has. And Alfred, and I'm gonna paraphrase here, says, you know, some men just wanna watch the world burn and I think there is something very true about.
This knee hill, this nothingness the nihilism that is really at the core of some of those who are in power right now that it is about destroying, it is about chaos. It is about with, without any kind of. Clear end in mind. And so at least I am struggling to find it. I got the impression that Mr.
Brooks is struggling to find it. And there are others as well. I don't know if either of you have thoughts about this, but I think that's one of the things that's really difficult is trying to anticipate, well, what is the end goal here? You know, in the case of Hitler, it was expansionism across Europe, you know a lot, and this is again, a real.
Historical negative marker. Right. Something we shouldn't forget that as long as Adolf Hitler and his regime was incarcerating and killing Jews and other minoritized people in Germany, a lot of other countries looked the other way. It was only when he started invading places like Poland and France that then they realized the real threat.
So I think, you know, I bring that up because, these again, are things that, not, that don't happen overnight, but we could see in retrospect, in hindsight, that Hitler's goal was to take over Europe, right? It was expansionism, it was Imperial Empire building. I don't know, short of retaking the Panama Canal in Greenland or maybe Canada.
What Trump's imperialistic tendencies are. But the little drip is really troubling.
DAULT: So I was listening over the weekend to an interview. That Ezra Klein did with a writer by the name of Philippe Sands, and they were talking about the question of genocide, and one of the things that was said in the interview is that genocide is really a concept that is born out of the wake of World War II and is born out.
Of the wake of the Holocaust, the Showa, and one of the things that came up in the conversation is you, when you look at the Nuremberg trials, they really weren't using the legal structure of prosecuting genocide because that legal structure wasn't in place. It arises after this horror has happened, and one of the things that.
Sort of arose in the conversation is the fear that not just the Trump administration, but other authoritarian regimes are trying to move us back to a kind of pre 1945 legal regime where populations and individual subjects. Are the property of their sovereigns and the sovereigns, whether the sovereign nation or a sovereign leader can basically dispose of them as that sovereign wishes, which is kind of what happened.
You know, the we will treat this population as refuse and we will clean up the garbage and burn it. Is basically the nightmare scenario that according to Sands and Klein. That maybe we're watching these various regimes, including the Trump administration trying to return to. And we can also look at that in terms of trying to return to a point prior to the 1960s where the dumping of toxins into the atmosphere and our water was just business as usual.
And so I've been thinking a lot about this since I heard that conversation. And one of the things I've been. Kind of reminiscing about is the role of the Catholic Church, much like it played in certain parts of what we call the dark ages of being the repository for a certain set of knowledges. But in this case, instead of being a repository of intellectual knowledge, it's a repository of the language of human rights and the language of environmental protection and the notion in some ways that that we are seeing, that we are seeing this possibility of the regime being countered by the Catholic church in some fashion.
SCHLUMPF: I do think it's somewhat encouraging that we have in our new someone who seems very committed to Catholic social teaching, as was his predecessor. And so while we don't. You know, totally know where Pope Leo is going with every single issue. Yet I think we can feel confident that he's going to speak out for the dignity of the human person on many of these issues.
So that gives me some hope.
DAULT: Well, listeners, of course we're gonna have more to say about the Trump administration and these developments in episodes to come, but this at least gives us a good overview for framing the conversation for this season. We're gonna leave it here for now. Please do stay with us because after the break we're gonna come back and Heidi's gonna be interviewing Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I'm really looking forward to. During that conversation, I know that you are too. You're listening to The Francis Effect. We'll be back in just a moment.
SEGMENT 3 - Interview with Archbishop Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico
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SCHLUMPF: Welcome back to The Francis Effect. I'm Heidi Schlump with today's guest, Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Archbishop was one of four Episcopal leaders on a pilgrimage of peace to Japan earlier this month in remembrance of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The group also included faculty and students from some Catholic universities, including our own David dol. Archbishop Wester has long advocated for peace, and in 2022 issued a pastoral letter calling for universal verifiable nuclear disarmament. The letter titled, living in the Light of Christ's Peace.
Challenges the theory of nuclear deterrence and warns of the new arms race from weapons modernization among nuclear powers. The Archbishop is a California native and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1976. He was made an auxiliary bishop in for San Francisco in 1998, and then was named to head the Salt Lake City Diocese in 2007.
He has been Archbishop of Santa Fe since 2015. Welcome to the podcast Archbishop.
WESTER: Well, thank you very much, Heidi. It's a pleasure to be with you.
SCHLUMPF: I am so glad you were able to come speak with us about this. Let's start with that pilgrimage that you just returned home from a few weeks ago. I think this was a really significant trip. We not only had. Two archbishops, two cardinals, but folks from these universities, including students meeting with religious leaders in Japan as well as survivors of the nuclear attacks.
The, tell me if I'm saying this correct. Heba. Kha.
WESTER: Haba.
SCHLUMPF: Hibakusha. Thank you. Now, I know you've been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki before, as you mentioned in your pastoral letter. So what struck you during this visit?
WESTER: Well, I think Heidi, that being the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, that added an element of soreness to it, an element of a heavier. I'd say, you know, 80 years ago people were more attentive to this anniversary and there was, there were, it was more this type in the last this is my third time back for these commemorations, and I'd say that far more people were involved and and the church celebrations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and there were more civic.
Officials there at the events, UN officials, leaders of ambassadors of different countries, et cetera. What really struck me was I'd say the the unanimity of people that this is an issue that we simply must confront in our world today. We can't afford to keep kicking the can down the road.
And there's a certain urgency, I would say you might wanna put it 80 years. Is too long to wait for an end of nuclear weapons. And so, you know, we did see a reduction in force of course, reduction in arms in the eighties we went from over 80,000 nuclear weapons to the 13,000 plus we have today in the world.
So we know it can be done. But now we're in a, arguably a far more dangerous nuclear arms race. Then the first one, especially with the advent of AI and hypersonic delivery systems and more, you know, the geopolitical tensions we're experiencing in the world today, all of this makes things even worse.
So, so yeah, I, I think there was more of an intensity. A sense that you know, the fact that the two cardinals came, Cardinal McElroy and Cardinal Soch, along with Archbishop Chen uh, you know, shows that that this is something that we're taking note of and that we're trying to get people's attention.
I.
SCHLUMPF: Well that, thank you. I had not thought about the implications of AI on nuclear weapons. What are some of the concerns there? Can I ask?
WESTER: Sure. Well, you know, ai, as I understand, I obviously it's something that's coming out. Now, I'm not an expert on it by any means, but, you know, AI means that you'd have a computer involved in nuclear the protocols. So conceivably, you know, you could have a computer making decisions to annihilate millions of people.
Ultimately billions of people. There's a nuclear winter, there'd be about 5 billion people would die. So, the nuclear AI doesn't have a conscience, doesn't have a heart.
It's a program, a computer program. And so, we certainly don't want to allow the fate of the world to put that in the hands of a computer.
So that that's very dangerous it seems to me.
SCHLUMPF: Yes. Well, you mentioned the intensity at this visit and everyone you know, really thinking now is the time to do something. I know at least one Catholic commentator was saying that the trip didn't get enough. Coverage. And I'm wondering, do you think that you, that Americans are paying attention to this issue?
There's just seems like there's so much going on in our country and it's a new, you know, threat to democracy every day. And how do we get people to pay attention to this and how do we get Catholics to pay attention to this?
WESTER: Well, yeah I agree. I think with the Ukraine war. There is a heightened awareness of nuclear weapons. Certainly Putin has rattled his nuclear Sabre. And I think that's an issue that comes up, you know, the fact that Ukraine had nuclear weapons and gave them up. So this whole question has come to the, for more than usual, but.
Nonetheless. I'd say in general, this is not an issue that people really are aware of. They, I think we've been lulled in a false sense of complacency. The world has been told the last 80 years that the best defense against nuclear weapons is for us to have our own nuclear weapons. In other words, deterrence.
And in fact, deterrence is not. A good idea. It's the worst idea possible because deterrence, necess necessitates having nuclear weapons and the mere fact that we have nuclear weapons is what's so dangerous. Pope Francis said remarkably and boldly even possessing nuclear weapons is immoral.
And so we need as Catholic. Like to respond to the challenge that the Holy Father of happy memory gave us how to get people to do that. I don't know. I mean, people my age, I'll be 75 in a few months. You know, I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and but the young people today, the students that came to Roche Min Nagasaki with us they don't have any memory of that.
So I was really pleased to see them because. We need to let them know. I don't wanna scare them. We don't wanna be like fear Moners and say, oh, you're all gonna die. You know? And, but we do need to be realistic and say that this is the situation that our humankind has right now. Humanity is faced with this.
We got ourselves in a mess. So our question is how do we get out of that mess? And so the answer is get rid of nuclear weapons. So, I guess, I think this anniversary was away getting the students there. They were very attentive. They took notes and we gave a lot of speeches. I once again, renewed my sympathy for students sitting through all these long speeches and you know, in the hot muggy days of August, you know, and, they're valiant and they were very attentive, taking notes and writing up summaries, and they gave us a fine presentation at the end in Nagasaki and going to the museums and going to the masses. We had beautiful masses and Cardinal Soup Beach gave a beautiful. And Hiroshima and Cardinal McElroy gave beautiful talks, as did Archbishop Bechen.
And so we all had opportunities to speak and so, they were very attentive and I was very encouraged by their presence. I just hope now that when they go back to their schools, to Notre Dame, to Loyola Chicago, and University of New Mexico, that they will you know, continue to champion this important cause.
SCHLUMPF: Yeah, you just mentioned Pope Francis there, and I was remembering that he also went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And on the anniversary, our new Pope, obviously Pope Leo mentioned the issue of deterrence and saying deterrence is not, you know, the way forward. What are you thinking about? Pope Leo, is he going to be picking up this cause of peacemaking, which was very important to Pope Francis.
What are you hoping for with Pope Leo?
WESTER: Yeah, I, you know, I can't speak for him, but I, I hope that, and I, I'm confident. He would definitely follow Pope Francis' lead in this very important issue. I know that Cardinal Journey and, and his team, the, his staff there at the the cast for integral Human Development and Alexio.
Per, pco, he's had a wonderful team and so I think the Pope Leo will very much be in, in this line. Uh, Certainly his past speeches and writings would indicate this to be so I think, you know, he's just beginning his pontificate and I think he's wise. To listen.
I remember Pope Francis always said that at Bishop, the Pope, especially the bishops are teachers, but good teachers have to listen first. So I think he's gonna listen and hear what the people of God are saying. And that Sinal approach of St. Of Pope Francis. And so I think that there'll be he'll be doing a lot of that.
And he's already, he came out with a statement when we were there for the eighth anniversary. It was clearly the Pope is you know, not. In favor of deterrence. He's in favor of a process that would limit and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons. So we'll have to wait and see, you know, when he thinks the time is right and how he'll come out, how he'll come out on that.
SCHLUMPF: Yeah, I mean, some people are already speculating and it is too early to tell that peace might be one of the major issues that he's gonna focus on. We will see as the pontificate evolves. You mentioned remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I know once you. Moved to New Mexico, your archdiocese has connections to the issue of nuclear weapons.
It was the site of the Manhattan project and home current home to nuclear laboratories repositories as well. Can you tell me a little bit about what personally for you made this an issue that you wanted to, you know, do this pastoral letter about and why it's something you've focused on a lot in as a bishop.
WESTER: Well, I have to say for me. On a personal level I never, ever anticipated writing a pastoral letter on nuclear disarmament. I wrote a pastoral letter on Advent when I was in, in salt Lake City, and you know, that would be the kind of pastoral letter I would think about. But this clearly is an issue.
That's that it has to do with Catholic social teaching. It has to do with the sanctity of human life. It has to do with the dignity of the human person and caring for God's creation. All these critical Catholic social teaching. Points are involved. So for me personally, I was in Japan actually in 2017 with the late Cardinal Veda and the late Bishop Steve Blair of Stockton.
And we three went to Japan on a two week vacation together. And I saw the museums in Hiroshima and the Jim Boku dome and the hyper center and the Peace Park and talked to Haha. And we went to Dr. Na guy's hut that they built for him when he was dying there and and Nagasaki. And so we really witnessed all of that.
And then I came home and I was taking some friends to the museum in Santa Fe and they had a whole section on the Manhattan Project, a whole section of this museum. And it was very interesting how the whole thing, and of course now the Oppenheimer movie made it very popular in, in a more heightened awareness of it.
And it dawned on me, I said, well, here I am. I've seen both ends. I'm the Archbishop of Santa Fe where the nuclear bomb was born, and I've been to Japan where the nuclear bomb was detonated twice. And the only time it's been detonated in war in that way. And it dawned to me that, you know, well. If we, you know, brought the bomb to Japan, maybe we need to be part of bringing peace to our world and an end to this dis destructive power.
I don't think there's something that people comprehend that the bombs that were detonated little boy and fat man in Japan. Would be like pop guns compared to the nuclear weapons we had today. The Archbishop Bechen and his archdiocese has eight tri, the 10 tried and submarines, eight of which have nuclear war fighting capabilities, and just one of those submarines has enough firepower to destroy all of human civilization in the entire world.
Just one. And so what we have now, we've created, you know, one big mess, put it bluntly, and it's a moral mess. It's a existential mess. It's a spiritual mess. We've taken on. Blasphemous ability as a human race to think that we can become just as God has created everything and now we've become capable of destroying all of that.
So I think we need to really recognize what we're doing and that we need to. So that's why I thought, well. We need to do this, we need to take, we have a place at the table in Santa Fe. We certainly had a place at the table in the industrial military complex and still do. Right now in Los Alamos.
They're building pit cores, new pit cores for a completely new modernization program of nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons we have now in the United States have been proven scientifically to be totally reliable. That's what the military is respo is mandated to do by the president of the United States to have at his disposal nuclear weapons.
If he was to use them, they're ready to go at a moment's notice. And so we have that. But we're going beyond that and now we're creating new nuclear weapons. It's gonna cost trillions of dollars in the next 10 years to do this. It's a whole new arms race that we're in. And it also means what are we gonna do about that beyond an atmospheric testing?
You know, we have these new pit courts, they have to be tested. How are we gonna do that? So these are all questions that I have. And so I think that's going on right now in the archdiocese. So I think that I just felt. It was a moral imperative that we do this, that we speak to this issue.
And then Pope Francis really laid down the gauntlet when he said The mere possession of nook weapons is immoral. And so that's something that we as Catholics can't just ignore, you know? I mean, I, and that's why my pastoral centers called a conversation. It's meant to a conversation toward nuclear armant.
We wanna engage everybody, scientists, nuclear scientists, atomic scientists, engineers moral leaders, political leaders, everybody, citizens to talk about this whole crisis of nuclear weapons. And so, so that was what got me going on it. And well, here I am. It's I'm on my own little.
Ministry now kind of created a little cottage ministry here. I have to sometimes remind them I am the Archbishop of Santa Fe. I do have a few other things to do, you know, but this is extremely important and I feel that it's worth my time and effort.
SCHLUMPF: Well, definitely. You mentioned how Pope Francis said even possession of nuclear weapons would be morally wrong. He also said a few things about just war, and I wonder about is that something you get involved with too about whether, you know, just war criteria or theory might be changing in terms of what the church teaches about that, or is there even.
How does this fit with nuclear? Because it just, as you mentioned, with the capacity to basically destroy the entire earth, how could that ever be considered a just part of a just war?
WESTER: Right. Well, that's a good question Heidi. And I think, you know, the just war theory can be debated in and of itself since it began, you know, with Augustine and then refined by Sinek, by Saint Thomas of. Cornish, but with nuclear weapons, there's absolutely no question that the just war theory goes out the window.
Now, it should be mentioned that the just war theory is not meant to kind of allow you to go ahead and wage war. Oh, this is great. Now I can wage war. The just war theory in its essence was meant to limit war. It's meant to say, no, you can't do war. And if you really think, you must, you have to obey these criteria.
So the, but now the, with nuclear weapons, you know, in terms of you know, you have to have you, you can't attack human innocent human lives, for example. You have to have proportionality, ality. You have to have a reasonable hopeful anticipation of success. So how could wiping out the human race.
Achieve any of those, li respond to any of those limits? Impossible. So the just worth theory really is no longer nuclear weapons really just took it off the table. And even if, you know, and of course, Pope France, as you mentioned, Pope Francis, Heidi, I mean, just the possession of nuclear weapons is already hurting people.
Look at the downwinders that have been, you know, generations of cancer victims because of the development and continued development of nuclear weapons. Look at the money that's being spent. That should be going to medical cures, that people are suffering from cancer, that we have cancer cures, or children are not being educated and people who are not being fed because of the money.
The vast sums of money that the world spends on nuclear weapons, as I mentioned already, over a trillion dollars event by the United States the next 10 years. So, I mean, you've got tremendous sums of money that are being expended. And not to mention the fact that nuclear weapons are already harming us because of, I would call it nuclear colonization, that the nuclear powers are really colonizing the rest of the world.
They're saying, we're in charge. We're in charge of you. We could kill you. We could wipe you out if we decide to. And so by threatening that, by having the weapons, you're really engaging in kind of a whole brand new doctrine of discovery. A nuclear colonialization, it seems to me. And and typically it's the poor anyway that always suffer in these things.
You know, they're the ones that, and climate disruption, you know, they're the poor would be the ones that suffer the most as the climate disruption continues in our world. So I think that these are things that have to be recognized. The just war theory was meant as a good thing to help limit war, but now the only way to limit.
Wars, obviously as it got peaced, but one of the first steps is to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
SCHLUMPF: You know, you've done such a good job of laying out what the problem is here and how concerning it is with the new arms race. I think sometimes it can be paralyzing to think about how horrific this is and could be. So what do you recommend for everyday Catholics? What can we do, what can our listeners do to try to.
You know, put Catholic social teaching in, in practice and apply it to this issue.
WESTER: Well, the first thing I, that comes to my mind, and I think some people, especially if you're not Catholic or you don't have a, you know, if you're not religious. I think pray I, the power of prayer can never be underestimated. We have to pray to the prince of peace and to our blessed mother. You know, Mary is our mother who cares for her children and pray for peace.
You know, let's not ever stop praying for peace if every Catholic in the world, 1.4 billion last time I heard was to pray for peace at mass. And your home and your parishes everywhere. Pray for peace. Secondly, I think get, become involved. Educate yourself on it. I mean, don't just accept, you know what the military industrial complex tells you, and there's big money in nuclear weapons. And those people who have all that money don't wanna see it dry up, you know, so there's a lot of influence that's behind the scenes. You know, what they say, follow the money. And that's, that applies here as well. And so become involved, become educated on the subject, and try to find out more and more about find out, read what.
Popes and the bishops have said about it the bishop's pastoral in 1983 talked about nuclear weapons at that pastoral did allow for deterrence, but the church no longer does the bishops have changed that there, there's been a development on the thinking on that, but so, you know, become educated, become vocal, don't ever, I remember I was meeting one time with and in Washington DC and we were, one of the politicians, I won't mention names anyway, they said, well you should be telling your Catholic, we were talking about immigration at the time and they said, well, you should tell your Catholics what you bishops think. 'cause they don't all agree with you. And we politicians like votes. So if we make our voice heard, and if there are enough people, let me tell you.
I know for a fact if politicians know there's a groundswell of support for nuclear disarmament, that will become the, our mantra, that'll become our mandate. So if. Call politicians write, you know, form parish groups, maybe in your peace and justice if you have a peace and justice commission in your parish.
Bring, we have one, we have a very strong one up here in Santa Fe, and the group is very powerful. They really work hard on, on this whole issue of nuclear disarmament. I admire them greatly because it's not a popular thing. The people always say, well, you're just being naive. But we say back, well, who's really being naive thinking you can live with nuclear weapons or live without them.
I'd say the ones that are being naive are the ones that think we can still keep nuclear weapons. And I think if we do, we're pressing our luck as the defense Secretary McNamara said under Kennedy, the only reason we got out alive with the Cuban Missile Crisis was luck and I think we'd all agree that luck is not a good strategy.
SCHLUMPF: Well, that seems like a good place to end unless there's anything else that you wanted to add on this topic.
WESTER: No, I, you're a good interviewer, Heidi. Thank you. I appreciate what you have. You do. It's I would just, you know, there's a quote I encourage people to look Omar Bradley five, I think he was a five star general and a general in World War ii. He was giving a speech on Armistice Day in 1948, and it really, it's something I keep going back to again and again.
If I can just quote, if you don't mind, it's very brief. He says, we have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the sermon on the mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. I think it's time, high time for us after 80 years to get on with living and get rid of these terrible weapons of destruction and death.
SCHLUMPF: Well, thank you so much again for sharing that with us and sharing about the trip and all the work that you and others are doing to try to work for nuclear disarmament. Really appreciate it, Archbishop.
WESTER: God bless you.
SCHLUMPF: Take care. This has been Heidi Schlump with Archbishop John Wester, and you've been listening to The Francis Effect.